Parker Graham

CEO @VestibleCo // Used to play sports, and no it wasn't basketball

[Parker Graham @parkercmgraham]

I've been obsessing about the Big Ten Conference PE deal the last few days and it got me thinking

What if the schools did their own IPOs vs being bundled together as a conference? How much more or less could they raise?

So, I did the math. Here's what University of Michigan athletics's IPO would look like if I ran it👇

[Parker Graham @parkercmgraham]

@NYSE @Eric_Criscuolo @VestibleCo @jd_durkin Thanks for having me!

[NYSE 🏛 @NYSE]

Today on Taking Stock | S&P 500 slips from a new intraday high on weak tech earnings and rising oil.

@Eric_Criscuolo unpacks Hormuz and $IBM + @parkercmgraham of @VestibleCo opens football clubs to retail investors.

@JD_Durkin has more after the close. https://t.co/JNTke1p3LX

[Parker Graham @parkercmgraham]

@haridigresses Have you used Gamma at all Hari? It’s been doing solid for me but I haven’t tried Opus

[Parker Graham @parkercmgraham]

Or work with @VestibleCo and raise investment dollars to right the ship 😁

[NIL 𝘯𝘰𝘵 NLI @NILnotNLI]

Current Big Ten member Rutgers University is $78,000,000 in debt.

​They are drowning trying to maintain the look of a big-time P4 program.

​Taxpayers & regular students are disproportionately paying for that look.

​The math suggests they’d look better back in the A10...

[Parker Graham @parkercmgraham]

Caleb williams 🤯

[Parker Graham @parkercmgraham]

An open market is the only rational answer for college athletics.

It’s the key domino to fix the ecosystem because people will finally be forced to cure the cancer rather than bandaid the symptoms.

[Ross Dellenger @RossDellenger]

Prominent college officials are publicly encouraging the cap on athlete compensation to be lifted. In the boldest comments yet, Miami AD Dan Radakovich tells @YahooSports it’s time to “open the market.”

The $20.5M cap is “too low,” adds Notre Dame’s AD.

https://t.co/oY5oqwWbXo

[Parker Graham @parkercmgraham]

Wait until people hear about their zyn and red bull budgets 🤑

[Daniel Roberts @readDanwrite]

Ohio State brass spent $65,809 on private jets to Big Ten Media Days in Vegas. Michigan spent $81,782.

On the way out of town, Matt Rhule and his group had $600 worth of Smashburger DoorDashed right to the jet.

fun stuff via @DavidCovucci's FOIAball

https://t.co/BhD7j7Ib8k

[Parker Graham @parkercmgraham]

In case you missed it, @EricPrisbell did an amazing job laying out the current landscape of capital in college sports as we kick off 2026. Opinions from @CodyC64, @WinterSportsLaw, Brett Yormark, @AdamBreneman81, David Miller and yours truly.

Thanks for including me and how we are trying to help at @VestibleCo 💪

[Eric Prisbell @EricPrisbell]

Behind deep-pocketed boosters, college football team payrolls keep escalating. Who can keep up with Texas Tech and others? My @dallasnews story:
https://t.co/wzEXY6R6O0

[Parker Graham @parkercmgraham]

@YBatoba @CowboyFB @lanetaylor65 Look at us aging like fine wine

[Yves Batoba @YBatoba]

It’s always a good time when old @CowboyFB teammates get together!

📍 Dallas | #GoPokes

[Parker Graham @parkercmgraham]

Lot of ways to respond to this take from Clay, but I think he had one through line that so many athletes miss, my generation included.

The alumni network of a school may be its most valuable and underutilized asset for athletes. The majority of my old teammates in high paying careers figure it out and used it, and the majority that are in low paying ones didn’t. It’s actually how I got my first post career job in wealth management.

While NIL has compounded the issue, it’s not directly correlated. Athletes have always had a problem with identity and career transition, and I could argue getting into more alumni networks actually increases your chances being successful in that transition. You just have to use it while you’re there.

One side bar - we’ve got to stop blaming kids for wanting to make the most money possible during their career. The key is that it is short by nature, so you have to maximize it for every dollar you can get.

It’s just like what any of us would do in our current jobs. If an accountant could reprice their contract every 6 months and go to the highest bidder for more money, they wouldn’t stay at E&Y for the love of the game. They’d go maximize themselves. Period.

[Clay Travis @ClayTravis]

Most college football & basketball players are destroying the best asset of college athletics — loyal alumni groups that can help employ you when your athletic career ends — over relatively small amounts of money.

[Parker Graham @parkercmgraham]

More guardrails are needed for sure, but college football has never been better.

Key things that should be added for next season to make it even better:

1.) Change the portal schedule to open after the national championship, not before. This is a no brainer.

2.) New Infer-conference Tampering Rules ran by the conferences instead of the NCAA. If a school’s coach is caught talking to players/agents/etc before the portal is open, it’s brought to a conference committee and if proven guilty, the team loses some of their conference revenue that season. Money gets distributed to other schools in the conference. This better incentivizes everyone to play by the rules and keep each other accountable.

3.) Expand the playoff to 16 teams. 5 auto qualifiers for conf champs and top G5 team. I really don’t care how you carve the rest of it expect for one condition- DO NOT give the SEC/Big10 5 additional at large bids a piece. We saw what that looks like this year and they aren’t as worthy of those bids as ESPN would have you think.

4.) Have the CFP games hosted at the higher seed team’s home stadium and not at bowl sites. Did you see the stands? Put these games where they belong so we can have historic matchups where Homefield advantage matters.

What did I miss?

[UGA Football @UGARecruiting20]

All those “pay the players” advocates…

How yall feelin??

Something has got to change

[Parker Graham @parkercmgraham]

👏👏👏

[Jordan Rogers @JordanRogers26]

NIL is not the problem. Dan points out the biggest challenge w/ the NCAA: we are trying to enforce Employment contracts, but calling it “NIL”. It doesn’t work that way 🫠

[Parker Graham @parkercmgraham]

The “tide” is shifting. Athletes don’t care about program history or legacy anymore. They want to be paid their market price to perform, regardless of the highest bidder.

Is it perfect yet? Absolutely not. But it is 1000% better than what we had before.

[Nicole Auerbach @NicoleAuerbach]

The SEC won four straight football national titles (with three different teams) from 2019 to 2022.

The SEC hasn't won one since. It's officially a three-year drought, with an ACC-Big Ten national title game guaranteed.

[Parker Graham @parkercmgraham]

Turns out parity is one helluva drug

[Brandon Walker @BFW]

The SEC’s grip on the sport was already gone, but tonight triple confirms it. Miami just physically looked way better than the last SEC team standing, and the SEC won’t have a team playing for it all.

The SEC has fallen. It is no longer what it thinks it is.

[Parker Graham @parkercmgraham]

The best take I've seen from a public figure on college football today @RGIII.

NIL has created the number one thing it needed for decades----- PARITY.

Now we know who the best teams, players, and coaches are, and the product on the field is better than it's ever been because of it.

[Robert Griffin III @RGIII]

The Transfer Portal and NIL have made College Football better and more popular than ever.

The version of College Football you grew up watching is dead.

But they have improved parity and forced College coaches to be better talent evaluators, culture builders and connectors.

[Parker Graham @parkercmgraham]

Turns out when you pay players, parity follows. Who woulda thought 🙃.

Next up, let’s figure out collective bargaining and employment for athletes.

[Bruce Feldman @BruceFeldmanCFB]

“Hard to ignore the fact that when everyone got to pay players, it leveled the playing field immediately. They can deny all they want, but that’s a fact.”
How NIL and the portal completely changed the landscape of college football:
https://t.co/fPdeWWgCyf

[Parker Graham @parkercmgraham]

The power of actually making bowl games a “fan experience” to watch

[Scott Kushner @ScottDKushner]

More people watched the Pop Tarts Bowl than the NBA conference finals.

[Parker Graham @parkercmgraham]

My kind of coach 😤

[Blake Niemann @Blakes_Take2]

Kenny Dillingham on the type of players ASU is recruiting to continue the culture he is building:

"You got to love football. You got to wake up every day with a passion about it. You got love showing up and lifting, running, puking, gaining weight, drinking protein shakes. You got to be obsessed with it."

@FOX10Phoenix

[Parker Graham @parkercmgraham]

Hate NIL, the transfer portal, and coaches leaving pre playoffs all you want, but at the end of the day “numbers don’t lie”. College sports for all its headaches right now is STILL America’s darling.

Viewership is up, impressions are up, and it’s generating more revenue than ever before.

Does it look different? Sure.

Is it going to keep looking different? Absolutely.

Is that going to make it implode? Not a chance

[Shannon Terry @ShannonTerry]

It is not the players who have failed the game; it is the leadership.

Keep that in mind. It has been an incredible college football season and great games ahead. Viewership is higher than ever, and the level of play is elite.

For all of the sky-is-falling talk, college sports are still the greatest show on earth. 🍿